


Reflections

by KCKenobi



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Anakin Skywalker Needs a Hug, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Haircuts, Hurt Anakin Skywalker, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Obi-Wan Kenobi Needs a Hug, Post-Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, Prosthesis, Sad Obi-Wan Kenobi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:48:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28672512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KCKenobi/pseuds/KCKenobi
Summary: To practice using his new prosthetic arm, Anakin cuts Obi-Wan's hair.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 40
Kudos: 256





	Reflections

It didn’t hurt anymore. At least there was that.

Anakin stood at his workbench, tampering with a droid motivator and doing his very best not to throw it across the room. His prosthetic hand moved slowly—fingers grazing the multicolored wires and chips in the durasteel covering. Before Geonosis, he would’ve been finished already. A bad motivator was barely an inconvenience when he could build a new droid from scratch, if need be. But though the pain was long gone from the fringes of his arm, it was _wrong_ somehow. He couldn’t feel the Force flowing through his fingers like he used to, couldn’t touch a machine and instantly read its configurations, couldn’t—

The wires fumbled between his fingers, and the device short-circuited.

Anakin slammed his hands against the workbench.

“Careful. Master Che said you could mess with the calibration.” From behind him, Obi-Wan’s voice was mild. “The neural pathways aren’t permanent yet.”

Anakin kept his eyes fixed on his hands. Though he could hear Obi-Wan in the kitchen, opening the jar of tea leaves and pouring water from the kettle, he didn’t turn around.

“It wouldn’t make much difference.”

“It just takes practice. Remember that mission to Columus?” he said. “With the sub-standard gravity, walking was bizarre at first. We staggered around like toddlers.” Obi-Wan opened the kitchen cabinet, then shut it. When he spoke again, his voice was softer. “You’re relearning something that’s always come naturally to you. It’s bound to be difficult at first.”

“That’s not the same thing.” Anakin hadn’t meant to snap, but there it was. He huffed. “I can’t even—I couldn’t do my belt this morning. I can’t rewire Artoo’s motivator. I need to be out there, tracking Dooku or facing Separatists or—or—”

_Or holding my wife._

Anakin swallowed. “But I can’t.”

“ _Yet,”_ Obi-Wan insisted.

“Oh, stop that.”

“I only mean—”

Anakin slammed his fists down on the table. His prosthetic made a deep metallic sound as it struck, and the droid parts rattled and shuddered.

Obi-Wan fell silent.

When he set the cup of tea down on the workbench, Anakin ignored it—he kept fiddling, fuming as wires touched conductors they weren’t supposed to and the current flowed wrong. Obi-Wan didn’t move away. He looked over Anakin’s shoulder, and in the reflection of the droid dome on the table, Anakin could see him. The curve of the metal distorted the image—blurring Obi-Wan’s face and stretching his features, making a stranger of someone he thought he knew.

When Obi-Wan’s eyes caught the reflection, Anakin looked away. But from the corner of his eye, he saw Obi-Wan’s hand run across his hair, his fingers slowing to brush the split ends at the nape of his neck. When he dropped them to his side again, they looked lost.

“Cut my hair.”

Anakin’s fiddling stilled. “What?”

“For practice,” Obi-Wan said. “I was going to do it anyway. May as well make some use of it.”

Anakin said nothing. He stared at Obi-Wan’s reflection in the metal until it turned and walked away. From the other room, he heard the refresher cabinet creak open, heard the rummaging through bottles and bacta patches and combs before the door clicked shut again.

When Obi-Wan returned, he had a pair of scissors in his hands. He set them down on Anakin’s workbench without a word, then retreated to the kitchen. For a moment, Anakin’s fingers went still, the wires limp in his hands.

And he remembered.

He’d been nine years old on Naboo when Obi-Wan had first cut his hair. It was long then, shading his forehead like golden curtains, and it always stuck to his skin when the Tatooine suns made him sweat. Obi-Wan had finished making the funeral arrangements, and while they waited for the Council to arrive in Theed, he and Anakin had gone out onto the palace balcony with scissors and clippers and a comb. Anakin felt the hair snippets fluttering down his neck and back. The tickle around his ears went away, save for the short beginnings of his Padawan braid. When Obi-Wan had finished, he held up a mirror for Anakin to see, but he’d found something else in the reflection—behind him, Obi-Wan’s cheeks were damp and his eyes red-rimmed. Anakin had lowered the mirror without even seeing his haircut.

Now, he set the motivator down on the workbench and reached for the scissors.

When he stood behind Obi-Wan in the kitchen chair, Anakin couldn’t see his expression. He was rather glad Obi-Wan couldn’t see his either as he positioned the scissors in his right hand, opening and closing them in the air.

_It just takes practice._

Anakin huffed. Obi-Wan was sure going to eat those words when he accidentally ended up bald.

Still, his fingers moved more smoothly as the seconds passed. When he was fairly certain he wasn’t going to cut off anyone’s ears, Anakin reached for the first lock of hair.

_It’s funny_ , Anakin thought. He ran a comb through the back ends and snipped the bottom centimeter. _All my life I’ve been staring at the back of Obi-Wan’s head—following him everywhere. To missions. To battle, to war._ _I follow. Always a step behind._

Until suddenly he wasn’t. He found himself thinking of Geonosis—of laying against the duracrete, cast aside by Force lightning as Obi-Wan fought Dooku alone. He hadn’t seen Obi-Wan’s face then. Only the back of his head once again, the blurry whirl of lightsabers and words. He suddenly wondered what he would’ve seen if he had—whether any emotion was betrayed there. Fighting his grandmaster. Seeing Qui-Gon in every flicker of their blades.

Anakin lowered the scissors. “Tell me when it’s short enough.”

Obi-Wan said nothing, so he kept going. Up the nape of his neck. _Snip. Snip._ The hair fluttered to the floor like fallen rose petals. His prosthetic was cooperating—though it was slow going, he’d managed to avoid turning Obi-Wan into a Wookiee so far. But it was getting short. He hadn’t known Obi-Wan to have short hair since he’d met him on Tatooine all those years ago, and Obi-Wan had never been one for change. Anakin wondered why now.

He was just finishing up around the sideburns and behind the ears when Obi-Wan finally nodded.

“That’s better,” he said, sitting forward. “I never did like the feeling of hair tickling the back of my neck.”

Anakin set down the scissors and comb. “So why grow it out in the first place?”

But the thought was already there—Obi-Wan, in the months after Naboo, looking in the mirror when he hadn’t known Anakin was watching. He’d run his fingers through his hair and pulled some of it back in a ponytail, and for a moment, they’d both seen someone else.

The answer flickered through Obi-Wan’s posture too—his shoulders tightened, his chin tilted up. But, instead of turning that tightness to words, he swallowed.

“It felt appropriate, at the time.”

Anakin’s voice felt paper-thin. “And now?”

For a long moment, Obi-Wan didn’t answer. He sat in the chair and ran a hand across the newly trimmed bangs, the sideburns, the edges. When he lowered it, Anakin noticed the tremble.

“I’m not the person I was before,” he said. “I shouldn’t look like him either.”

Anakin stood rooted behind the chair, staring at the back of Obi-Wan’s head as though he could see the expression on the other side. There were a billion things he could have chosen to say, a billion ways he could have done things differently. Instead, he walked away.

He returned with a mirror.

When Obi-Wan held it up in front of him, Anakin looked too. He expected to see himself in the reflection—his own tired face and sunken eyes and the beginnings of wrinkles on his forehead.

Instead, Obi-Wan looked back.

And for the first time in a long time, Anakin didn’t look away.

“Thank you,” Obi-Wan said softly. His head tilted a bit to the side, and Anakin watched the movement—how, in the reflection, everything was backwards.

“Yeah,” he said. He inhaled again, but all that came out was an echo. “Yeah.”

Obi-Wan lowered the mirror. He stood and went to the cabinet beneath the sink, pulling a dustpan from the clutter. And together they cleaned the wisps of hair in silence, put the scissors away, replaced the kitchen chair—feeling different, somehow. In some intangible way.

When they were finished, Anakin nodded and returned to his workbench. He felt Obi-Wan’s gaze behind him as he flexed and unflexed his prosthetic hand, until finally there were footsteps moving away. But a pace from the door, they stopped.

“And Anakin?”

He turned his head slightly in acknowledgement.

“You’ll relearn how to live, after everything’s been taken from you,” Obi-Wan said. He exhaled slowly. “You’ll learn how to go on.”

Anakin’s hands found the motivator again and fiddled aimlessly, filling the dead air with clicks and zaps and his own shaky breath. Until again, he heard footsteps.

He looked back to the metal and watched Obi-Wan’s reflection walk away.

**Author's Note:**

> The little bit about young Obi-Wan making his hair look like Qui-Gon’s in the mirror was inspired by [ this lovely artwork! ](https://kurtssingh.tumblr.com/post/619225250255781888/he-smiled-like-nothing-happened)
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments and kudos always appreciated 😊 Come say hello on tumblr: [ kckenobi ](https://kckenobi.tumblr.com/)


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